‘You are what you eat’ — this phrase is often thrown around by puritans who categorise people into Sattvic, Rajasic and Tamsik (in Marathi saint Sant Dnyaneshwar’s autobiography) to judge them basis their food habits. Marathi author Shahu Patole, 62, says, “If diet is linked to behaviour and character, then why has the class and caste system survived to this day? Why the fight against untouchability? Who compelled Dalits to eat inferior food?”
Had writer-translator Shanta Gokhale not written about Anna He Apoorna Brahma in Mumbai Mirror, the English world wouldn’t have known of Shahu Patole’s existence. Patole first wrote his pivotal and pioneering book on Dalit foods in 2015. Then revised and rewrote it in 2016 and then again in 2020. A fourth edition is forthcoming. “Because it was a Marathi book, people had hardly noticed it,” Patole says. The book was translated into English as Dalit Kitchens of Marathawada (2024; HarperCollins) by Bhaskar Korgaonkar. The Aurangabad-based Patole spoke about it at this year’s recently-concluded Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) 2025. He will next talk about ‘Food and Feelings Without Frontiers’ on Day 1 of IHC Samanvay, on February 14, at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre.
Back to the roots
Translator Korgaonkar says, “India possesses a vast cultural treasure trove across its numerous languages and subcultures. Unfortunately, some of these languages are on the brink of extinction, and with their loss, we risk losing their cultural heritage as well. It is crucial to preserve and document this wealth while it is still accessible. While some individuals have started this work through social media — mainly in video form — written records remain indispensable for longevity and accessibility.”
“From 1969-70 onwards, Dalit literature began to be written and published in Marathi. In those, mentions of Dalit food is there, but not in detail, that collation and detailing I had to do. I didn’t find any literature on Dalit foods/cuisines, from anywhere in India. Some might have written on when Dalit food began, but what is of essence and what is missing is: how to produce and how to collect it. Only Down to Earth wrote about how to source the food. How to cook it is not important for me. Where food, water, fuel has come from, that’s important. What is that history? That’s not available anywhere. I turned to the Dalit sant (saint) autobiographies and literature,” Patole says, over Zoom. From reprised versions of Leelacharitra (the first Marathi book to have been published, before 1208) and Shri Dnyaneshwari (originally written by Sant Dyaneshwar in the 13th century) to Taraal Antaraal (1981; Shankarrao Kharat), Akkarmashi (1984, Sharankumar Limbale), among a whole plethora of source materials.
Second, “the educated lot from our two castes (Mahar and Mang), especially at the officer level, are ashamed of their identity. The villagers don’t feel shy in revealing their food habits as much as the Dalit officers in the cities do, they refute that they used to consume beef/buff,” he adds. The same people who earlier believed in the myth that consuming buff causes itching are eating buff now because Maharashtra has banned beef. “It doesn’t itch any more,” quips Patole, laughing.
A social shame
Patole experienced something similar when Akashvani (All India Radio) posted him in Nagaland. “The new generation there, too, says they don’t eat dog meat (in June 2023, the Gauhati High Court overturned a ban on the sale and consumption of dog meat, which has been an accepted part of the Naga diet, in Nagaland). Like the younger Mangs say they don’t eat bada/bade ka meat (cow meat),” says Patole, who recalls the shock that an African national and a Nagaland local expressed at the fact that despite being a Hindu, Patole consumes beef.
A third reason why he wrote the book is because, he rues, “this is my last generation. So, our children’s children should know what their forefathers used to eat. I have done documentation. Leave others, even my children don’t know what we used to eat.”
If there’s one ingredient that Patole misses the most in his diet today, it is yesur, a staple masala powder without which the Mangs can’t make food, especially non-vegetarian dishes. In all this time, did nobody think of selling Dalit foods? There might have been takers. Marathi poet and one of the founders of the Dalit Panthers movement “[Poet-writer] Namdeo Dhasal had started a restaurant [in Mumbai] but that wasn’t successful,” says Patole.
No choice in food
“We are Dalits, we were poor,” he drops a truth bomb. “But we weren’t so poor that we couldn’t afford things. I have seen poverty from close but didn’t have to endure it. My father was a chaprasi (peon) with the government,” says Patole, the eldest of five siblings.
Growing up in the Maharashtrian village Khamgaon, Patole doesn’t recall any first memories of food because he says they didn’t have much choice when it came to eating. During his middle-school years, Patole studied at a boarding school, 15 km away from his village, where the students, across castes and religions, didn’t have much of a choice for the meals given to them. Meal was fixed: “Arhar ki dal ka paani and jowar ki roti…I endorse that children of all castes should be sent together to boarding school so that all of them understand what hunger is?” he says, “By the time I passed out of boarding school, in Class X, I had toughened up and understood everything about the difficult social circumstances that a Dalit has to navigate in life,” he adds. If anyone questions his food habits, he quips: “Mera hai toh main khata hun, tujhe kya lena dena hai? (It’s my food. What’s it to you?)”
Word for word
The translation process took over a year. Korgaonkar has remained true to the original text and the author’s voice, he says, since Patole has written the book in a “very matter-of-fact tone”. “This required me to handle the material with utmost respect and sensitivity, ensuring that the essence and authenticity of the narrative were preserved without distortion. I have made every effort to render even deeply rooted cultural references and folklores accurately, providing sufficient context and explanatory notes where necessary,” says the translator.
Korgaonkar adds, “It was quite challenging (to translate the book), as the culture was only partially familiar to me. Although Marathi is my first language, I was born and brought up in Mumbai. My parents are from Goa and south Konkan, so I am well-acquainted with that culture. However, my professional work later took me to western Maharashtra and some parts of Marathwada, which provided only limited exposure to the history and geography of this region — particularly from the perspective of marginalised communities. I don’t belong to this specific sub-region. Consequently, many aspects of the culture were new to me. To deepen my understanding, I visited Shahu ji and his family in their village in Osmanabad and stayed with them for a week. I also spent time at his home in Aurangabad. These visits were invaluable in helping me grasp the cultural nuances and the lived realities of the community. For instance, I initially held the preconceived notion that their diet consisted of beef and pork on a regular basis. Engaging with Shahu ji, his book, and his family helped me challenge and correct such assumptions.”
Same meal, different feel
Patole insisted that Korgaonkar uses the term Marathwada in the English title because the region is surrounded by western Maharashtra, Khandesh, Vidarbha, northern Karnataka, parts of Telangana (and erstwhile Andhra Pradesh), and the food patterns of the Dalits in all of these places are similar. “We have Mahar and Mang here (in Maharashtra) and it is Mala and Madiga in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka. Our food culture is similar. The only region which is absent in this [book] is Konkan, because the Mang Dalits don’t exist there, and their food culture is totally different: fish and rice,” he says.
In the village, the food patterns of all castes are the same, says Patole, “Everyone’s food grows in the same fields, the water is also the same, but when it enters the kitchen, it becomes pavitra (pure) and apavitra (impure). So, the food is all the same, but my touch makes it impure. The difference is solely of untouchability.” He says there are four main Dalit subcastes in Maharashtrian villages, namely Chambhar, Dhor, Mahar (aka neo-Buddhists) and Mang, in that order of descending social importance. In his book, Patole, a Mang, focuses on the latter two, Mahar and Mang, both of whom consume beef or buff. Chambhar and Dhor don’t. Mang eat pork, Mahars don’t. That is where their dietary differences end, rest they eat just what the upper castes do. What is intriguing is to know how casteism flows within the Dalit subcastes, too. “Even the converted Christians among these two castes, Mang and Mahar, don’t marry their daughters with each other,” says Patole.
Eats shoots and leaves
In India, the author says, “vegetarianism is only among the upper castes. It never existed among the lower castes. In my own opinion, propaganda works in such a way that that is spread/publicised what never existed. The Survey of India should tell you that 100 per cent of the SC/ST community have been non-vegetarians. There will hardly be more than 10-15 per cent of pure vegetarians. Most would eat eggs, at least. Non-vegetarians don’t go around converting people to non-vegetarianism. The concept of food purity is laced with caste and flows down from the upper-castes.”
Patole details in the book how the influx of vegetarianism happened with the coming of Jainism and Buddhism. Hindus thought that they will lose relevance, and so, started enforcing vegetarianism. “It’s been 2,200-2,500 years, even today, they [upper-caste Hindus] are promoting vegetarianism; even after 2,500 years, you have not been able to convert even 50 per cent of India into vegetarians, it means you have a problem, we [non-vegetarians] don’t have a problem,” he says, calling a spade a spade.
The book is an unusual cookbook which is really a rich ethnographical account of dietary habits, along with recipes, with each comes a story, a slice of history. No measurements are given for the ingredients though, because, he says, “our mothers never cooked by measuring in a spoon or a cup.” It lists other kinds of meats as well, such as moholachi poli (honeycomb), whose gravy tastes best with jowar bhakri, the reader is told. If the savoury gram/chana dal flour diamond-shaped thapvadya are eaten on Yel Amavasya, the week of remembering one’s ancestors, the Mahars and Mangs cooked padval (snake gourd) only if someone gave it to them out of their produce. The Mangs and Mahars, who lived outside the villages, and those who became extra-religious because of the influence of the Vaishnavs, ate ratali (sweet potato) on Ashadhi Ekadashi.
Dalit & Muslim food cultures are different
What is also pertinent in Patole’s book is that he outlines how the dietary habits of Muslims and Dalits are different and why it is false propaganda that meat-eating/slaughtering came with the Muslim rulers. “I’ve written in my book that in the 13th century, Muslims came to Maharashtra. We’ve been eating meat from a time before that. So, who used to cut and sell meat here? One should think about that. Before the Mulani community came, among the Muslim SCs, whose job was to cut goats in the village and sell them, the Hindu Khatiks would slaughter animals here for the consumption of the Hindus,” says the author, “That is why I have written in the book that there is no relationship between Muslims and our [Dalit] food. Both are different cultures. There is no connection with the British either. Our food culture is different from other Dalits as well, since the effect of Hyderabad culture has been on us. The sole difference is, and it is a good thing for us, that Muslims don’t consume the blood of the creatures (we consume the blood), and they never consumed dead animals (like we did), they still eat halal. In my village, dead animals were eaten until 1974. That has ended. We used to eat buffalo, bull and cows, while those who had goats (usually the upper castes) ate them. Today, here, people prefer halal only, and they buy from the Qureishis, who are sold buffaloes by the Hindu farmers. And who are the consumers? Hindus, like me.”
Famine, drought & survival mode
In 1972, Maharashtra experienced a severe drought. Perhaps, the second severest scarcity of food after the great Durgadevi famine of 1630 AD. While Marathawada didn’t face a water problem this time, there was an acute shortage of grains. It was during this time that “policies like the Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme (which gave livelihood opportunities and which was the seed for the MGNREGA Act) was started under the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Occupations such as digging ponds, digging gravel, etc. were introduced. Villagers began working together for the first time, and started getting paid in cash. They started eating together and their food habits changed,” says Patole, “of course, villagers also learnt about corruption and bogus money.” The Mangs ate a particular plant which the goats wouldn’t. Because food availability was low during the drought but also traditionally less for the Dalits, the quantity of beef/buff on their plate was more in comparison.
Patole’s favourite dishes, however, include dal vanga, spring onion, sepu sukha (dill) made without oil, “I love food without oil,” he says, and that is what he cooked and fed Rahul Gandhi during Dussehra when the Congress party leader and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha went visiting Patole after having read the book. Few politicians meet commoners outside of electoral campaigning. Even if for optics, greater exposure to other cultures make humans evolved and compassionate. “I fed him three vegetables, none of them had oil. One was a dry leafy vegetable from chana tree. There was a spring onion dish. And dal vanga (brinjal with toor dal). He loved it,” says the author.
The legacy of Babasaheb Ambedkar
“That my father could study and become a government peon, that he could make me study and get a government job, that I could send my daughter to study at Oxford University and work in London, that I could write a book and people want to hear me, the sole credit for all this goes to Babasaheb (Dr BR Ambedkar). Babasaheb was a great man,” says Patole in a resounding voice. So, how did he, as a Dalit, feel when the Union Home Minister Amit Shah said in Parliament, that “Ambedkar’s name has become a fashion now. If they (Dalits) chanted god’s name instead of his, they would have reached heaven in their seven births”? Patole says, “What he said about Babasaheb was very wrong.”
“Whether or not one believes in him/follows him, criticises and speaks ill of him, but whatever rights you have got in life, those are because of one person and that is Babasaheb Ambedkar. There is no religion behind this. We must acknowledge this. To the retired officers from my caste who follow/work for the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamseva Sangh], to them I want to say, how does it matter if you even do so much as take Babasaheb’s name? Had Ambedkar not existed, would you have been enjoying the rights and opportunities that you enjoy today? Babasaheb hasn’t written for any one group, but for all citizens of this country. If the Constitution [of India] changes, say, in the next 10 years or so, will people then realise that they were wrong about him? It would be too late by then,” remarks Patole, who has taught his children to pay their debt of gratitude. “Whatever we are today, we wouldn’t have achieved had it not been for the seeds sowed by Mahatma [Jyotiba] Phule, Shahu Maharaj (Kolhapur) in Maharashtra, and in south, there was Periyar, among others. That I can speak today is all because of these people. We must acknowledge their efforts,” he says.
More voices: Dalit artists & food
What does he make of younger Dalit artists, such as Rajyashri Goody and Sri Vamsi Matta, who are working with/around Dalit food through their craft? “It’s good what they are working on. I spoke to Vamsi Matta, and told him that the need is to actually speak to retired Dalit officers who are ashamed of their caste identity, and hide and don’t speak about their food either,” he says.
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